Monica Edwards

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Monica Edwards (born Monica le Doux Newton in 1912, died January 18, 1998) was an English children's writer of the rural, middle-class school which dominated mainstream British children's literature of the mid-20th Century.

Born in Belper, Derbyshire, she spent much of her childhood living at Rye Harbour in East Sussex, encountering fishermen and rural characters who would later appear in her "Romney Marsh" series of books. In 1933 she married Bill Edwards in Rye Harbour Church, and would publish articles and verses in a variety of publications, and spend eight years as editor of a Correspondence magazine for parents, before the publication of her first book "Wish For A Pony" in 1947, set at Westling (a renamed version of Rye Harbour), with the town of Rye itself renamed Dunsford and nearby Winchelsea becoming Winklesea. The lead character, Tamzin Grey, was clearly based on Monica herself as a girl (like the author she was a vicar's daughter).

In November 1947, Monica and Bill Edwards moved to Punch Bowl Farm in Thursley, South West Surrey, the setting for her other main series of books (slightly renamed to Punchbowl Farm). The main characters in the Romney Marsh series are Tamzin, Rissa, Meryon and Roger; in the Punchbowl Farm series they are the Thornton siblings Dion, Andrea, Lindsey and Peter. The Romney Marsh books feature fictionalisations of towns and villages in the area; Rye becomes Dunsford, Winchelsea becomes Winklesea, and Rye Harbour becomes Westling.

Monica Edwards differed from many of her contemporaries - notably Enid Blyton - in that her characters grew older with the books until by the end the older ones were on the edge of adulthood, and the atmosphere of the books changed with the times (Anthony Buckeridge does change the atmosphere of the Jennings books as time passes, but the characters are the same age in 1994 as they were in 1950). The innocent celebration of childhood and traditional farming methods of the early books give way as time passes to an increasing unease which fits well with the mood of the 1960s (although there are social tensions, relating to Britain's relationship with both the United States and the Eastern bloc, in "The Cownappers", published as early as 1958).

In the Punchbowl Farm series, a profound tension develops between Dion (who wants to turn it into a modern, efficient farm) and Lindsey (a romantic, probably based on the author herself to a certain extent, who yearns for traditional farming methods). Andrea, on the other hand, would prefer to live in a town or city and shows little interest in farming, aspiring instead to an Americanised consumer lifestyle. This uncertainty comes to a head in "Fire In The Punchbowl" (1965), which takes place in a heatwave and ends with an apocalyptic blaze which seriously damages much of the farmland, and captures what one can easily imagine to be the author's paranoia about the technocratic vision of the Harold Wilson government. Her final fictional book, "A Wind Is Blowing" (1969), begins with a crime and has little to do with most of its predecessors, being instead an encapsulation of loss of innocence, the end of childhood and the end of the 1960s (unlike all her previous books, it is not illustrated). Monica Edwards, effectively, destroyed her own mythos.

She herself (like Anthony Buckeridge) tended to prefer her later work, and regarded her famous and much-reprinted first book "Wish For A Pony" as a primitive early effort. Her penultimate book, "Under The Rose" (1968), created a whole new set of young people who seemed to fit very much with the mood of the time, and was one of its author's favourites - in a parallel universe, she might have continued writing fiction well into the 1970s, when the characters of "Under The Rose" could potentially have fitted into a new series of books comparable with her namesake Monica Dickens' "World's End" series. However, her husband Bill - who had been working away for two decades at Punch Bowl Farm - was seriously disabled in a tractor accident in 1968. This almost certainly had a major effect on Monica Edwards' decision to give up writing fiction; further farming was now pretty much impossible, and she and her husband left Punch Bowl Farm at the end of 1970 and moved to a bungalow nearby, retaining access to the dramatic valley around the farm.

The supposedly unsettling elements of the later Monica Edwards books, which some claim are not easy reading, are probably part of the reason why her last two fictional books, "The Wild One" and "A Wind Is Blowing", have never been reprinted until now (in fact they are almost impossible to find - copies are regularly sold on eBay for three-figure sums). Monica Edwards’ main publisher was Collins, of London, but there are Armada paperback editions of many of the titles, up to and including "Fire In The Punchbowl", the third from last title in the main series. A possible explanation for the last two books' non-appearance in paperback is that even by the 1970s reprints of her books were increasingly based on their growing nostalgia value, and Armada may have believed that the last two books could not fit into that vision. In the 1980s John Goodchild published the earlier titles, using text edited or abridged by the author and without any internal illustrations. This series stopped before "Storm Ahead" could be produced, due to the death of the publisher, and this partially explains why the later books are so rare.

Most of the books were illustrated by Geoffrey Whittam with images based on the actual places which are the subject of the books.

Monica Edwards’ two children, Shelley and Sean, still live in southern Britain. They have recently agreed to the republishing of their mother’s entire output, starting at the point where John Goodchild stopped in the 1980s, with "Storm Ahead". The appointed publisher is a small concern specialising in the nostalgia republishing of (mainly girls’) books, Girls Gone By Publishers. This distinguishes them from the reprints of the 1980s, which were still notionally aimed at children; the forthcoming reprints are essentially aimed at nostalgic adults.

Bill Edwards died in 1990, and Monica on 18th January 1998.

Contents

[edit] Series fiction

  • Romney Marsh and Punchbowl Farm series (note that characters from each series frequently appear in books of the other series)
  • Wish For A Pony (1947, Romney Marsh)
  • No Mistaking Corker (1947, same characters as in the Punchbowl Farm series but before they move there)
  • The Summer Of The Great Secret (1948, Romney Marsh)
  • The Midnight Horse (1949, Romney Marsh)
  • The White Riders (1950, Romney Marsh)
  • Black Hunting Whip (1950, Punchbowl Farm)
  • Cargo Of Horses (1951, Romney Marsh)
  • Punchbowl Midnight (1951, Punchbowl Farm)
  • Hidden In A Dream (1952, Romney Marsh)
  • Spirit Of Punchbowl Farm (1952, Punchbowl Farm)
  • Storm Ahead (1953, Romney Marsh)
  • The Wanderer (1953, Punchbowl Farm)
  • No Entry (1954, Romney Marsh)
  • Punchbowl Harvest (1954, Punchbowl Farm)
  • The Nightbird (1955, Romney Marsh)
  • Frenchman's Secret (1956, Punchbowl Farm)
  • Operation Seabird (1957, Romney Marsh)
  • Strangers To The Marsh (1957, Romney Marsh)
  • The Cownappers (1958, Punchbowl Farm)
  • No Going Back (1960, Romney Marsh)
  • The Outsider (1961, Punchbowl Farm)
  • The Hoodwinkers (1962, Romney Marsh)
  • Dolphin Summer (1963, Romney Marsh)
  • Fire In The Punchbowl (1965, Punchbowl Farm)
  • The Wild One (1967, Punchbowl Farm)
  • A Wind Is Blowing (1969, Romney Marsh - features only Tamzin and Meryon)

[edit] Non-series fiction

  • Killer Dog (1959 - novelisation of Monica Edwards' script for the Children's Film Foundation film "The Dawn Killer", made in 1958)
  • Under The Rose (1968)

[edit] Career fiction

  • Joan Goes Farming (1954)
  • Rennie Goes Riding (1956)

[edit] Non-fiction

  • The Unsought Farm (1954)
  • The Cats Of Punchbowl Farm (1964)
  • The Badgers Of Punchbowl Farm (1966)
  • The Valley And The Farm (1971)
  • Badger Valley (1976)

[edit] Connected reference books

  • The Monica Edwards Romney Marsh Companion : Brian Parks (published by Girls Gone By Publishers, July 2006)
  • The Monica Edwards Punchbowl Companion : Brian Parks (to be published by Girls Gone By Publishers, date TBA)
  • Monica Edwards Biography : Brian Parks (to be published by Girls Gone By Publishers, date TBA)

[edit] External links

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